


In The Face of Death

by getoffmybarricade



Category: Les Miserables
Genre: Cannon Era, Character Death, M/M, after the barricades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22130239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmybarricade/pseuds/getoffmybarricade
Summary: The June morning was deathly silent. There was not a person in sight except the old man whose wretched job was to collect the bodies of the fallen barricades.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	In The Face of Death

The June morning was deathly silent. 

There was not a person in sight except the old man whose wretched job was to collect the bodies of the fallen barricades. The cobbled streets of Paris that in the summer were usually decorated with flowers and the scent of freshly baked bread were instead stained with crimson blood, the shutters on every window nearby drawn tightly shut, refusing to look out onto the sight below. They could have helped the old man thought, they could have saved them.

  
As he passed every body, every person who died the previous night, he felt a twisting in his stomach. They were so young, they had their whole lives ahead of them-but because of an unjust system, this was how their lives were cut short. He remembered passing the Cafe Musain every week, he remembered catching a glimpse of inside. They would all gather close, but their voices would carry through the thin windows and he could hear the pure passion and hope that filled each young voice. Voices that had gone to waste.   
  
The old man didn’t know their names, but he recognised them. 

He recognised the man with dark curly hair who has always seemed so full of life, he remembered the man barely more than a boy with flowers in his long hair and the young girl who used to wonder the streets with a lost look in her tired eyes. But worst was the little boy-the little boy with straggly blonde hair who used to attend every rally, every protest,but couldn’t have been more than ten years old. He should never have been at the barricades. He should never have had to suffer.

  
The man had no choice but to pick each body up and place them in the cart; lifeless, glassy-eyed forms of the revolutionaries they once were.   
  
The last place that he checked was the top room of the Musain, and when he did, his heart stopped. There were too men that lay by the window there. As still and devoid of life as every other fallen warrior that lay outside, but there was something about them. The taller of the two he recognised as being the Leader. He had golden curls that fell into his icy sapphire eyes, and even in death he bore the trace of a slight smile-he didn’t fear it. 

He didn’t fear death.   
  
His red jacket was stained with blood from the eight bullet wounds in his chest, but straight away the old man knew him to be Enjolras-the fearless leader. He recognised him from the rallies, shouting for equality with such passion he was a privilege to hear.   
  
The other was his polar opposite. His dark hair was messy and he was unshaven, wine staining his lips almost the same colour as his own blood. This man’s name he did not know, but he still knew of him, remembered him from the back corner of the Musain. He would argue and infuriate the leader but it was quite obvious he admired him all the same. Like his leader, he too bore a wistful smile, but one of acceptance and not of defiance.   
  
The leader had one hand wrapped in the red flag of revolution, tying him to his fight, but the other was clasped in the calloused hand of the man next to him.   
  
And though they no longer lived, they still seemed to glow-one with righteousness and glory but the other simply glowed in his presence.   
  
They were Icarus and Apollo.   
  
The God of sun and a man who flew too close to that sun.   
  
As in life, they could not be separated by something as little as death.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t think of a name for the man I guess “the old man” will have to do.  
> I know that technically Enjolras dangled from the window but i thought it might actually be sadder if they were to die holding hands and stay that way  
> So  
> Thanks Victor Hugo for killing them all off :(


End file.
